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Thursday, April 5, 2012

My Battle with Resin

Hello everyone! As promised I'm showing you guys my finished Scrabble tile pendants. I'm sorry it took so long! I was waiting to receive my parts to make them into pendants and I had to take all the photos. All of these pendants are available for sale in my etsy shop!

Since I finished making the Scrabble pendants, I've been playing around with resin a lot, and it's been quite a roller coaster ride. There were a lot of bumps I hit along the path...

Working with resin seems very simple; you just mix part A and part B, and pour!....No way! I wish it was that easy. Resin is challenging for many reasons. First of all it takes 24 to 72 hours to cure which leaves a lot of time for errors to occur. For me it was the battle with dust particles and air bubbles. I had to constantly check for these before it was too late. Secondly, there are many factors that can affect the curing process. These include the age of resin, incorrect mixing process of resin and catalyst, and weather. Resin will not cure properly if the resin is more than a year old, so be careful when you buy it off the shelf at a craft store. Inaccurate measurements, cold and humid weather can also result in uncured resin.

I'm still learning the wonders of this medium with trial and error. Recently I made these pieces using a mold, and I've been having issues with the resin bleeding into the image, even after sealing them. The bleeding makes the paper look wet and you won't know whether you sealed it properly until you pour resin on it. You can't really tell unless you look very closely, but me being a perfectionist, it bothers me! I also had issues with some of the pieces not curing properly...

You can see the blotchy wet spots on Snow White's face and skirt :-( This would'vebeen a cute, usable piece if it wasn't for the spots!!

Here are some more pieces I made using candy sprinkles. They turned out ok so I turned some into key chains.

Resin and candy sprinkles.

This is my favorite. Combining resin and miniatures.

I definitely need more practice and more patience. Anyway I hope everyone is having a wonderful week! Thank you for visiting and reading this post!

The sprinkle ones are so adorable! I love the scrabble pendants too. I had no idea resin could be so temperamental but I hope you keep at it because it's clear from these you have some great ideas for using it.